


Like Ships in the Night

by blackwolf066



Series: Season 1 what-ifs/fix-its/etc [1]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Death, Canon Temporary Character Death, Five and Klaus never cross paths, Gen, Klaus Hargreeves Needs A Hug, No Incest, Number Five | The Boy Needs A Hug, So be warned, and the one time they didn't, five and klaus in the apocalypse, five burying his siblings, klaus survives the apocalypse, not your average, speculation piece, theory piece, this is angst filled, until the one time they did, what if
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-23
Updated: 2020-07-23
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:35:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25461028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackwolf066/pseuds/blackwolf066
Summary: What if Klaus survived the apocalypse, but Five had long since buried him and his siblings and left for other parts of the city, by the time he woke up? What if, like ships in the night, they kept crossing each other's paths without even realizing it? What if, the only reason the commission took Five out of his time, was that the two were dangerously close to meeting up?Five can't know what happened. The timeline would surely be out of their control if he caught wind of who started it.The handler wasn't worried. She had a plan.
Relationships: Number Five | The Boy & Klaus Hargreeves
Series: Season 1 what-ifs/fix-its/etc [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1877290
Comments: 25
Kudos: 153





	Like Ships in the Night

**Author's Note:**

> ((((This would not have come to fruition if it weren't for Tjstar--if you're looking for things to read, I recommend checking their profile out. They are totally awesome! 
> 
> It's just a theory/speculation piece that kinda fills in some of my questions. Like Five's paranoia or why he has a gun in the first place. Or Klaus and his supposed immortality and how I could go about using that. 
> 
> Anyway, enjoy guys!))))

Ash fell like snow. The air hot and scolding with each breath he took. The crackling, popping of the flames grated on his eardrums and nerves as he pulled the wagon of scrounged supplies and his new companion, along with him.

He needed to find a suitable shelter, and more drinkable fluids—food could wait a bit longer, but the thirst would certainly kill him faster with this unbearable heat.

Five dreaded what the summer would bring if he couldn’t get himself home by then.

It was around this time, as he continued to hunt for supplies, that he found… _them._

They were older, nearly unrecognizable from what he remembered just hours ago, but still very clearly his family. Any tears he shed, evaporated off his cheeks as he screamed for the last two siblings he couldn’t find in the rubble.

The flicker of hope that burned in his chest; that maybe Ben and Vanya were still alive, refusing to be crushed and snuffed out.

(***)

He was alone.

He was truly and utterly alone.

With four bodies he now had to figure out how to bury.

Decision made; despite the logical side of his brain yelling at him to conserve the energy and not waste the time—they were already dead, half of them were already “buried”, so why bother—he spent the rest of the day trying to find a suitable tool to start digging with.

He found a lead pipe with an end that had been flattened enough to aid him.

(***)

Working through the night to save himself from over-exertion and dehydrating under the sun; Klaus’ burial came first.

He was the easiest to move, all gangly limbs, lean muscle, and lying mostly on top of the wreckage instead of under it.

There were no parting words to be said; just the steely determination to get the task done before he could break down.

His words wouldn’t change anything anyway; they were dead and there was nothing he could say that would bring them back.

Getting home would.

(***)

The second day was just as unkind. The heat blistering, and the ash and flames following him into his dreams, as he found a place to rest.

By the time the evening arrived, he was already halfway through digging out Diego’s shallow grave.

He was the easiest to pull from the rubble out of the remaining three siblings—but the smell… god, the smell was already starting to get to him.

His still unnamed friend, lost the bottom half of her blouse; tying the ripped fabric around his nose and mouth as he pushed onward with the burial.

(***)

Allison came next on the third night.

Between freeing her from the debris, rigger-mortis, and the over-all decaying air surrounding him; it took longer to move and bury her with the other two.

His undershirt quickly followed the blouse.

The sight of his dead siblings wouldn’t be the only thing to haunt him for the rest of his life.

(***)

By the fourth day, Five was exhausted and Luther was impossible to move—let alone free. Not to mention the state he was in after four days baking, being off-putting enough to prevent him from even trying.

In the end, he found as many carriable stones and slabs of concrete as he could and piled them around and on top of his brother’s body.

In the silence that followed long after his task was complete, Five still didn’t utter a single word to their graves.

Numb as he was—tired as he was—he grabbed the wagon handle, and left the four of them behind.

He _would_ see them again.

No, if's, and's, or but's about it.

He _would_ get home.

And when he finally did, they would be _alive._

(***)

“You don’t belong here.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“Do I look like I’m joking?”

“You can’t be serious.”

“You need to go back. I don’t need you here yet.”

“Listen, little girl, did you not just see the world ending in a wall of flame? What is there left for me to go back too?!”

“ _You don’t belong here_.”

“No, I’m not going, you can’t make—”

He awoke to darkness and dirt filling his mouth and lungs.

(***)

“Go back.”

“To being buried alive? No!”

“You can’t stay here.”

“I’m not go—”

He was met with more darkness.

_And more dirt._

(***)

“Go back.”

“ _I hate you_.”

(***)

“Can’t you at least unbury me or something before you send me back? This shit is getting old.”

“You’ll have to help yourself.”

He’s tried; _three times prior_ already.

He told her as such.

He awoke to all-consuming darkness again.

(***)

“G—”

“Yeah, yeah, just get it over with.”

This time as the darkness surrounded him, as the dirt and the clawing grip of claustrophobia and panic began to set in; his hand finally broke the surface and pushed free.

The world he was met with as he took in a shuddering, cough wrecked breath of air, had him glaring up at the sky in disdain. The wails of the charred and unrecognizable ghosts around him; made things even worse.

This was the world she wanted him to go back to? Alone, with his siblings nowhere insight to act as a buffer?

_What a bitch._

(***)

As Five began to scour the wrecked city in one direction. Klaus reluctantly cut his losses and went the opposite way.

(***)

Five was sixteen when his path almost crossed with Klaus’.

By this time, supplies were scarce to none, but that didn’t stop him from trying.

He needed to survive. He needed to get home and stop whatever it was that caused all of this in the first place.

As he bent to dig under the wreckage; movement caught in the corner of his eye.

By the time he looked. It was gone.

(***)

Klaus was thirty-five—or maybe he was thirty-seven; he stopped keeping track long ago—when their paths nearly collided again.

By this time, the wails of the dead had basically ruined whatever hearing—and sanity—he had left.

There were so many ghosts; a sea of death and decay from pre and post end of the world, that it was hard for him to even spot where paths ended and razed concrete began.

Too many bodies, in fact, that he didn’t even realize he was looking at the back of Five’s head before both of them were moving off to different locations.

(***)

Five was twenty-nine when it nearly happened again.

He’d long since given up on finding food. Anything left now outdated and expired. Roaches and insects were the only other things that seemed to have survived the initial destruction—most of the rats and mice having long since died off or moved on to other parts of the country.

Delores was just telling him one of her stories while he scribbled his equations on the wall when he heard it. 

The sound of rubble being displaced by weight pressing and shifting against it.

The hope that he might not be the only one alive after all, wasn’t enough to make him call out.

Instead, he listened, bending slowly to pick up the metal pipe as his eyes shifted around the openings of his make-shift home.

Nothing else happened.

No more noise, or falling debris, or any life to be seen emerging from the shadows.

The next day, he found a gun.

(***)

They're both old and grey—Klaus more so—when they finally do cross paths.

Klaus was old and weary by now; body fragile and weak, but still unable to find peace in the afterlife; no matter how many times he’s died from dehydration or fluke accidents.

Or the bullet that somehow found its way into his skull.

That last one he’s still not sure if it was simply a fever dream or just some really bad roaches—the wraiths around him weren’t helpful in the slightest in answering that mystery either.

His joints screamed their hurt. His knees and feet protested each step he forced them to take. His eyesight was the next thing that was starting to go. He could barely travel more than a few paces without his smoker’s lungs getting winded. Which was how he’d ended up in some cellar—simply content to sit and wait for when the little heathen was finally ready to call him home.

Five was making his way down this very cellar—intent on grabbing as many bottles of wine he could find and carry back with him when he stumbled across the old man seated on the floor.

His rifle shot up in an instant; the paranoia of chasing ghosts all these years causing him to doubt what he was seeing.

Klaus couldn’t hear him or his approach, and the cataracts that fogged up his eyesight, barely allowed him to see past his own nose—let alone the shape that was descending the stairs toward him.

Five opened his mouth to say something, eyes blinking rapidly—thinking the image would disappear at any given minute—when time suddenly froze.

With Five along with it.

In the next moment, time began to move backward; like a VHS tape on rewind.

Five was back at his hovel, and Klaus was barely making it down the pathway toward the cellar, when a well-placed patch of rubble caused him to trip, hit his head, and come face to face with god again.

By the time he woke back up to the world of the living; Five had already come and gone—none the wiser that Klaus had been thirty paces away from the cellar entrance.

(***)

“We can’t keep this up.”

“They’ll just keep crossing paths eventually.”

“Nothing we do seems to keep this damn guy down.”

The handler sighed and raised her hand to silence their concerns.

It was time to move on to plan B.

It would be risky, but nothing riskier than allowing this game of cat and mouse to continue.

Come what may, they had plenty of time on their hands to fix it.

(***)

Forever like ships in the night; the two brothers never crossed paths again.

Five was taken out of his time to make sure of that fact.

Klaus remained obliviously behind.


End file.
